


The Death of Balthier the Deathless

by coloredink



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-10
Updated: 2007-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Death of Balthier the Deathless

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.  
Push off, and sitting well in order smite  
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  
Of all the western stars, until I die.

\-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

\---

Long ago, peace descended upon Ivalice. Archadia has begun its long, golden reign of peace, and a queen sits the throne in Dalmasca at last, her hair shot with silver and a King-Consort at her side. The Mist recedes from the barren lands that were once Nabradia, though the place is still Jagd and no man who values his life will set foot there. Kiltias has built itself a new holy city upon the Isle of Murond, and Mt. Bur-Omisace is now a monastery, inhabited by ex-refugees and ruled by the kind and venerable hand of a viera. And, perhaps most important, in Rozarria a child walked to a well and spoke: "Cover this well, and do not drink from it; it is cursed." And there was a plague in Bervenia, and only those who listened to the child did not die. Now she is fourteen, but powerful and fearsome, and her word of the One God travels across Ivalice.

Also in Rozarria, there is a sky pirate, and he is discontent. Ivalice has shrunk; airships are sleeker, faster, and less costly, no longer the luxury craft of the wealthy and the criminal. The only sky pirates who profit now are the ones who target the shipping lanes, and there are few of those, they having long been ruthlessly eradicated by the law. Those who still hold hard to the romantic notion of the traveler and the treasure hunter have departed for far-flung lands--save Balthier, who reasons that he stands to profit most if all the competition now seek the horizon's edge. But there are no more tombs to be raided in Ivalice, no more buried treasure that is not the stuff of myth and fancy.

It's been too long, he thinks. Too long since--everything. Too long since he flew for the sake of flying, too long since lions roared in his blood and left him breathless and grinning. He has grown complacent, perched on his riches. Perhaps he, like his beloved airship, is twenty years too old for the sky; he has had to wear spectacles for the last ten of them, and it grows harder each year to find the parts he needs for repair. Each day, he looks in the mirror and sees his father there, and he thinks, with the dispassion born of denial, that he should have died at twenty-five and spared himself the trouble of growing old.

His partner has not grown old, though she too is discontent. Her sleep is broken and restless, punctuated with ancient dreams that are not hers: dreams of desire thwarted, of power as great as that of the gods, of ice and light. She dreams of the green song of the Wood that she no longer hears; she dreams of her sisters who have forgotten her name. She knows the dreams are false, and this troubles her. One morning, she woke and could not remember the name of the village where she was born. She asked her partner, and he gave her a long, searching look and replied: Eruyt, and are you growing old, Fran? Memory not what it used to be? but his gaze was troubled. Fran repeated the name to herself, silently: Eruyt, and held it as a child would clutch a sentimental toy. When next she forgets the name of the city where her partner was born, she does not ask; he does not like to speak of it, anyway--that much she remembers.

The dreams are worse aboard the airship, her memory even more diaphanous, and it is for her sake that they have limited their flights. It makes Balthier unhappy to be so grounded, but he is unhappier to see Fran unwell. And so they move from town to town, they hunt Marks, they raid the coffers and caches of the old houses. They while away the nights in fountained plazas--Rozarria, it seems, sleeps only when the sun is high--drinking fruited wines and speaking of the past and the future, and sometimes they part for days.

At the end of one of these partings, Fran comes to Balthier again in one of these plazas, where long strings of lamps cross 'twixt the trees, where the men have their shirts half-buttoned and the women wear light, filmy dresses and perch on the edges of their chairs. There are two glasses on the table, half-filled with wine, and as Fran takes her seat, Balthier calls for another order of one of the flaky, nut-filled pastries that Fran does not dislike.

"I hear word of a relic in Murond," Fran reports.

Balthier's eyebrows climb to his hairline. "The Holy City?" The Holy City is new; it ought not contain anything of great age or worth unless they brought it there--though that, he supposes, is not beyond reason.

"Nay," she replies. "The treasure lies in Gudgodah."

"The holy ruins?" Balthier leans back in his chair and whistles, quietly, to himself. "So close, and yet so far," he murmurs, staring up at the twinkling trees. "Why have we not heard of this before?"

"It is legend, in the main, just as the espers were," Fran says. The pastry is set before her, dripping with honey, and she takes it in her long-fingered hands and nibbles. "But we have sought more on less."

"We've also sought more on more," Balthier says. "What makes this one so exceptional, then?"

Fran returns the pastry to its plate. "The tales tell that when the espers first fell, they fell to this place, and so a temple was built there to honor the might of the gods. And in the temple they laid a sword, said to be one that the gods used against the espers; it is said to be what sealed them in stones."

"Ahh."

"I will go alone," Fran says, knowing that Balthier is ever at her side, but also knowing that for his pride she ought give him the choice of refusing, "if it interests you not."

"And why wouldn't it?" Balthier says. "This will be one in the eye for the Church, and you know how fond I am of them." His wicked grin lifts the years from his face. "Well, then. Let us get a good night's sleep, and be off with the dawn." It feels like old days, he does not say; he does not need to.

\---

Fran dreams that night.

The airbike lists crazily to one side, and then gives up flight for good. The impact judders up her elbow into her teeth, and her blood seizes, weightless, as she is flung through the air. She lands on the cracked stone hard enough that she bites through her lip, and she spits blood and reaches for her bow in one swift, smooth movement. She sees Balthier struggle to his knees from the corner of her eye, blood spreading in a wet, crimson butterfly across his sleeve, and she feels more than sees the Glyph of the Beast flare to life in the small of his back.

No, she wishes to cry, we cannot win this way. She knows not why she knows, nor how she knows, only that it is the truest of all things. But the words lock in her throat like a bone even as the summon-wind discomposes Balthier's hair, and by the time Fran looses an arrow it is too late: he dangles lifeless from the end of Exodus' sword. The naked curve of his throat is the most hideous thing she has ever seen.

The sun has only just begun to spill incandescence through the window when she wakes, feeling very much as though she has hardly rested, and she is aggrieved to find that, for once, Balthier has beaten her downstairs. He waits in the kitchen of their shared apartment with a plate of cooling flatcakes, spectacles perched on his nose, their inventory spread about him on the table: potions, philtres, ammunition. His gun, Sol, lies gleaming as if new at his elbow.

"Sleep well?" he queries.

"Nay," she replies, securing a flatcake. Balthier has cooked pieces of fruit into them, and she cannot help but smile, though the dream lingers darkly in the corners of her mind.

"What was it this time?" Balthier packs his bags, the items that will see the most use entering last, so as to be more easily within reach. "The Wood rotting away? Your sisters turning into behemoths?"

"Nay, it was none of these," Fran says.

Balthier is silent, though his hands still move mechanically, slotting phials and packets in their place. "Well, that's unusual," he says; more unusual that Fran is so reticent, even for her. But he does not press; she will tell him in her time, if she believes he needs to know. She has always been frank with him, even if he did not desire it, and he trusts her judgment more than his own. "That sword is yours, if you'll have it," he says, nodding to the slim blade that leans against the wall.

Fran regards it with surprise. She saw it when she entered, but thought it for Balthier; each of them keeps a blade for close combat as well as their preferred ranged weapons. She picks the sword up, inspects it, and finds it to her liking. It is well-balanced for her, light and easy to wield.

"I believe myself capable of selecting a blade that meets your exacting standards," Balthier says mildly, "but I am not nearly so confident about a bow. If you need one of those, we'll have to go again."

"My bow is an old friend," Fran says, sheathing her new sword. "Thank you."

"Good, then," Balthier says. "Let us be off."

\---

Kiltias lost its humility after the Cryst was shattered, and saw for itself profit in telling men how they should live, now that the gods no longer played at destiny. They moved their seat to Murond, already a holy place, and left the refuse of Mt. Bur-Omisace to the refugees. Now the Holy City glows up at the sky pirates like sunlight through honey, ochre and gold nestled in the pale hills, surrounded by a slender ripple of walls. Minarets thrust up from either side of the great domed temple at its center, the broad steps of its avenue lined with darker patches of trees. The irony of the walls, how the city nests on an island apart from the land, is not lost on Fran, who sees how humes do not change even in their changing; nor is it lost upon Balthier, who bears little love for things that conflict with freedom.

When the Strahl touches ground at last, the Holy City is far behind them. An immense road, made as if for the footsteps of giants, disappears into the Mist-shrouded trees, girded by walls. If it had a ceiling it would be called a tunnel, but it does not: they are merely walls, crumbled and covered with moss. Some of the stones still bear the clawed feet and lashing tongues of fantastic beasts, bas-relief feathers, here and there a forked tail or a rolling eye. Long ago, the pilgrim would have cowered beneath their judicer's gaze.

Fran breathes deeply, holds the Mist a moment in her mouth before expelling it. The scent here is familiar. It reminds her of--ah, but it's gone, slipped away. She does not chase it. The memory will return of its own volition, or it will not.

Balthier returns to her side from where he has been anchoring and cloaking the Strahl. Unnecessary precaution now, perhaps, when there are no headhunters standing on his neck, but he permits himself some small indulgence here and there. He watches Fran regard their surroundings, ears turning and listening, her chest rising and falling as she scents the air.

"Can't think why they'd build their holy city so far away from the supposed holy site," he remarks, breaking the sacred stillness. "Do you think they're afraid?"

"Are you?" Fran replies. Balthier has a tendency, she knows, to rush headlong into Death's grin--not because he is unafraid, but because he is. It is one aspect of his personality that she once feared would get him killed; now, she knows it to be true.

Balthier responds with the expected derisive snort. "I could ask the same of you," he says. "You're getting up there in years, after all; not as young and lithe as you used to be, and all that. Perhaps we ought rethink this venture, for your sake. I can find someone younger to have my back."

Fran, long inured to his supposed witticisms, does not even turn an ear. "You wear your fear well," she observes, because she knows it will rankle him.

"You wound me. That will teach me to be so considerate in the future," Balthier sighs, but he is amused. He is relaxed, nearly content; this feels much like the old days, she and he venturing into the dragon's lair, the Strahl awaiting their return. Perhaps they will not return at all. He peers down the road, with its decaying guardians. "As you're so insistent on this, then: ladies first."

The gates are shut. This surprises neither of them; though Murond be only a stone's throw away, no one has visited this holy site in generations. Places that bear the weight of gods do not lightly suffer visitors. The gates are tall, imposing, crafted of some slick, dark blue substance that is not quite like stone, and flanked by a pair of statues. Holy beasts, with heavy hoofed bodies, feathered wings, and garif masks in the place of faces. Fran recalls the gigas gate that barred their way to Giruvegan and pins her ears back. She has no wish to summon in this place. Balthier hesitates as well. But the gates cannot be penetrated by force, and there is no helpful inscription here.

Then the statues spring.

Balthier's feet move before his mind does; he ducks and rolls to avoid being trampled, backing away to take a more accurate shot, Sol braced on his left forearm. Fran, recalling lessons learned in the Stilshrine of Miriam, summons the wind to aid her. Even as Balthier riddles one with wyrmfire shot, she splits it down the center with a well-timed blast. The other bellows flame at them both; heat singes Fran's ears as she ducks, but Balthier is fortunately out of range, reloading. The next time he empties his gun into the construct, it is with windslicer shot. Fran calls the wind again: once, twice, thrice the blades of air smash into the statue's face, and at the fourth its head topples to the ground. The rest of it remains standing, puzzled and uncertain, before at last sinking to its knees and teetering gently to one side, like a foundered ship.

They stand for a moment, breathing hard. Then the severed head speaks in a voice like footsteps grinding on gravel: "Enter you the slashing place. You who have proven your strength, know that you tread upon the ground of gods."

Fran looks to Balthier, who merely raises an eyebrow. "Whatever happened to guardian beasts that ascertain your worth through riddles?" he wonders mournfully. "Wit is not as valuable as it used to be."

Fran shakes her head. The doors open at her touch without creak or groan, and they enter Gudgodah.

\---

It would be foolish to think that there were not more fiends within waiting to test their strength, or perhaps to simply test their patience. Even Giruvegan, the god-built place, was thick with them. There are fewer monsters here, though it seems like every statue they pass must try its hand. But Gudgodah was built by man and like everything man makes it has decayed, so that once-great halls lie half in rubble, broad staircases in collapse. It now resembles more the Necrohol that was once Nabudis than the well-kept timelessness of Giruvegan. Fran's map, purchased from her informant, is more frustrating than useful, but Balthier does not suggest discarding it. An imcomplete guide is better than none at all.

"We will have to take the long way 'round," he declares, holding the map at arm's length to make sense of it. "Is that not always the way? But if we retrace our--"

"Down," Fran commands, and darts left. Balthier just as quickly lunges to the right, more on Fran's order than any consciousness of danger, but his knee buckles beneath him. A swift sting to the jaw sets his eyes to watering, and icy flame spreads across his cheek. He hears the twang of Fran's bow, but the air behind him shivers and the arrow never meets its mark. Balthier struggles to his feet, leaning against the wall, and fumbles in his pouch for an antidote; already his head begins to pound from the poison.

Their foe is a nightmare of a sickly coral hue, so pale that it nearly glows. Nightmares are a deadly nuisance, darting from this world to the next and back again, so that by the time the shot is fired or the spell is cast, the nightmare is no longer where it was. But there's a way to hunt them; Fran exchanges bow for sword, and when next the nightmare reappears she strikes to miss. The nightmare transports itself away, placing itself perfectly in range of Balthier's gun. Balthier squeezes off a shot in its face, and the specter gives a terrible, deformed shriek, like a rabbit with that's had its back broken by a fox, and vanishes again. When it returns, Fran is crouched and ready: she delivers it a whip kick that snaps its head back on its neck, stunning it, and finishes with shatterheart, bright balls of ice that spin from her hands and halt the nightmare in its tracks. Balthier brings up his gun. The nightmare dies without a sound, dissipating sadly into snowflies.

"Good job," Balthier says. His voice creaks like the boughs of an ancient tree in the wind. His chin is wet with antidote. When he tests his knee, it flares in a bright blossom of pain, and he sucks his breath in through his teeth and reaches in his pouch for a potion.

Fran touches his wrist. "Nay," she says; she has seen this behavior too often. "We rest tonight."

"Nonsense," Balthier says. "A waste of time. A potion will--"

Fran shakes her head. "They are fine, when you are young. But the years line your hair, now."

Balthier meets her eyes, and she stares the truth back at him. Many a young mercenary has, in his youth, drank potions as readily as water, and in many a battle have such philtres turned the tide. But in his old age, the mercenary was crippled, the very molecules of his body weakened by the constant turning against time. This Balthier knows. He has always known. He did not think he would live long enough for it to matter.

"I taught you too much," he mutters. "All right, then; one night won't make much of a difference, I suppose. Where'd that map get to?"

They find themselves in their previous quandary, then: maps do not tell you when a passageway has been blocked by a cave-in, or a pool of water occupies the chamber you thought to pitch your tent. But they are fortunate, after some perseverance, to find in the corner of one room where a fallen ceiling tile forms something like a lean-to with three sides. Balthier stretches his injured leg before him with a hiss and thinks with something not unlike melancholy that in better years, injuries were medals to be shown off in bed; now they are grievances. Of course, in better years, his knee would not have given way. He feels old.

No fire, in such an unfamiliar place as this, but it is not cold enough to warrant one, which is perhaps strange in itself. They are too grateful to question it. Fran settles with her back against the wall, sword within easy reach, whilst Balthier fishes rations out of his bag. They eat and drink in silence, the Mist flickering with running, leaping, battling shadows all around them.

"Say, Fran," Balthier says. "What are you going to do when I'm gone?"

"What?" Fran is honestly astonished by the question. Humes do not normally speak so openly about death, and certainly not this one.

Balthier cannot help but claim her surprise as a minor victory. "Well, you've probably got another hundred years or so in you, maybe more. Whereas I, well, I've only a hume's mean lifespan." He can see little but her pale hair and ears in the gloom, but he knows that even in the golden light of day that her face remains unchanged, not a single line more than when they first met. And how old was she, when they first met? Reputedly, viera live three times longer than humes.

There is a long pause while Fran orders her thoughts. "I have not given it much thought," she says, truthfully.

"I suppose you'll just. . . go on," Balthier muses. "Do whatever it was you did for fifty years before we met."

He never asked, and Fran never offered, and now she finds it difficult to recall what she did before Balthier. Whether that is the espers' work or whether it is simply not worth remembering, she is unsure. She does not think there were other hume partners, before this one. She thinks one may be enough for one lifetime, even a viera's. "Do you plan to die so soon, Balthier?"

"Not much point in living like this," Balthier grumbles. "Aches and pains all over, having to wear glasses like some scholar rotting in his books. And all these young upstarts in their skiffs, cluttering up my sky." He sighs and says, quieter, "There's nowhere to properly run to, these days."

He sounds so low in spirits that it both chills her and breaks her heart. "Perhaps you ought stop running, then," Fran suggests.

That rouses him a little. "And do what?" he demands. "Take up gardening? Sit out on a sunny balcony and prattle on about how much better things were when I was young?"

"When you were but an acorn, dreaming of the oak," Fran says, carefully, not knowing how Balthier will receive this memory, "you spoke once of an island."

Balthier falls silent, thinking. He said a great many silly things when he was young and attempting to impress this tall, exotic creature who knew airships and swords. He said he was going to be the greatest pirate since Hyral the Longbeard, that his ship could and would outrun any and all Archadian crafts, that he would be first across the great eastern sea, that--

"Ah," he says. "King of my own floating island. Is that it?"

"You said you would rule a town to rival Balfonheim," Fran says, and she does not hide her smile. "King of the sky pirates."

Balthier cannot help but chuckle at his past self. Vaan Ratsbane is king of the sky pirates now, and well it suits him. "Well, surely my purse is full enough for such an unjustifiable extravagance," he says. "I'll not rule a town, though; I'm unsuited to positions of authority." He quirks an eyebrow at his partner. "Think you I'm suited for retirement, though?"

"Death suits you less, I think," Fran says. "Long life is no great misfortune. Many pray to the gods for such a chance."

"No leading man dies in his sleep," Balthier grunts. Had he died twenty years ago, they would have sung songs and penned legends of how he died, in some dazzling way, at the height of his glory. He sees no glamor in shriveling into an insect's husk and passing in your sleep, surrounded by legions of fat-faced grandchildren. But he is past the age for glamor. "Perhaps, then," he says, "what I need is one last great adventure. To tide me over for the next thirty years or so."

"Is this adventure enough for you?" Fran tilts her head, looks out to the sacred grounds around them, shrouded in yellow Mist. It is silent save for their heartbeats, their breaths. Outside, the moon might be rising, but that means nothing here. It is like enough to undying.

Balthier tsks. "It's not been near exciting enough."

\---

Fran knows not when she sleeps, but she dreams once more.

The leaves glow brightly against the sun. The air is thick with birdsong and the buzz of insects, the far-off cries of the panther and the diresaur. As if from far away, she hears some sweet strain of song. The voice of the Wood brushes against her ears like moth's wings, whispering to her in sweet honeysuckle, and her heart aches with the dreaming. Balthier is seated at the fountain; this is the nature of dreams. But then he speaks.

"He seeks death, you know," Cid says, as if to no one. She wonders why she did not recognize him before. Balthier and his father are not so much alike, and Cid is still garbed in his researcher's robes.

No, she wishes to say, but the answer is also yes. Balthier fears death, as all his kind do. Their lives are so short that they must fill every breath with meaning.

"You would do well to keep the espers with you," Cid continues. He smiles at her, but his gaze is vague, as if he cannot quite see where she is, or as if he speaks to someone else. "They are the only ones who can match the gods for power," he explains.

Your machinations have already torn history from their hands, Fran does not say. Surely you would have learned not to tamper with gods, any longer. Learned you nothing from the espers, who found the price of pride?

"The Age of Stones is ended," Cid says. "That does not mean the Age of Man has yet begun." He looks away, head tilted in the manner of a listening dog. If he hears anything, he does not say. "There's many a man who would pact with gods, if it benefit him in some way, and in that way the gods keep in their hands."

That statement deserves an answer that Fran does not give.

Cid sighs and stands, brushing invisible detritus from his vestments, an oddly familiar gesture. "You should leave this place. Gods have a way of twisting people, and they will not except viera. In the end, perhaps the only one who truly knew my mind was Famfrit." He smiles at her, like a father to a daughter, and trundles away.

She wakes woolly-mouthed. Even her ears feel stiff. Balthier's eyes open as soon as she stirs; he was not asleep, or not very close to it. He is heavy-headed, but alert. His bones are cold. "Well?" he asks.

"She speaks to me again," Fran says.

"What of?"

"Of consequence, there was nothing. But her methods grow more canny."

This is twice, now, that Fran has not confided in him the nature of her dreams. Usually she is not so terse. Balthier does not let it wound him. He rises slowly to his feet, grasping the wall to help him along. His bones pop and settle. "Well, she did mastermind the whole affair," he says. "And she's very, very old. I dare say she's learned a trick or two. Shall we carry on?"

"How fares your knee?"

"Better," Balthier says; he tested it, earlier, while Fran slept. "Fit to walk, at least. And I've made some sense out of our map; I believe there's a Waystone not far from here."

There is, although the fiends grow more numerous as well. They must look up with every step, wary of the ubiquitous slime, but spend too long with eyes turned upward means almost certain surprise by yet another living statue. But there are no more nightmares. Balthier breathes lightly when they reach the Waystone, though his hair is darkened with sweat. The Waystone itself is unguarded, but Balthier does not holster his gun, nor does Fran sheathe her sword.

"Well," Balthier says, reaching out one hand, "here goes."

The world flashes.

Balthier staggers and leans against the Waystone for support. The world around him is too bright after the dim ruins, and he shields his eyes with one hand. Proud, aggressive sculptures emerge gradually from this pale, luminous world, surrounding him as if he stands on a senate floor. He stares 'til the strange, familiar figures materialize, ethereal and ghostly, and then the old acrimony rises up behind his eyes.

"You," he says. "I recognize you."

 _We know you well, Bunansa's heir,_ speaks the leader, Gerun. He is not the eldest; age matters not to the undying. But all the same, he speaks for the Occuria. _Long years we've waited for this day, when we might speak and you might hear. But we are patient; we live long. Lay down your arms, and hear our words._

"I've hardly any choice, have I?" Balthier mutters, bitterly, but he does not release his gun, though little it will avail him here. To hold it comforts him.

 _We long acknowledge our defeat_. The voice is nearly soothing, and it sets Balthier on edge. _Your father did his work too well; beyond our ken lies hist'ry's weave_.

 _Defeat is not surrender's twin_ , another declares. _Our hand has guided hist'ry long. Arise we will, and lead again_.

 _Mankind's not meant to rule himself_ , a third one chimes. _How could he be? Small mortal, crawling in the clay. Our ways are endless: yours are not, will never be._

Balthier's head aches. If they are looking to endear themselves to him, they are not succeeding.

 _Our tool and weapon could you be_ , Gerun peals. _Would you correct thy father's deeds?_

Balthier smile is nearly sweet. "My past behavior might lead you to think that I make a career out of repairing my father's misdeeds," he says. "But I'm afraid that in this case, my father may have been in the right. I'll leave it be."

 _Without reward you would not be_ , their leader croons. _Our gift to you: immortal life_.

That must give Balthier pause.

In Ivalice, on the Isle of Murond, there is a holy ruin, and within that ruin is a chamber with a Waystone. Fran crouches by that Waystone, breathing hard. Her head is filled with the chanting of wasps, so that she can hardly hear Balthier. She knows he did not accept, though she did not hear his answer. She is too filled with pain; deep in her belly it squirms and howls clear as a wolf on a cold desert night: Ultima's great song of power. They're here! she bells, not with voice but with might. Set me free, they're here!

Balthier, she wants to say, but she has voice no longer, and Ultima is free.

\---

Balthier opens his eyes and finds himself not at the gates, but in some deeper chamber, dark save the light from the Waystone. He sags against the Waystone and attempts not to vomit. He is shaking. He fishes his spectacles from his pouch, only to find them cracked and useless, and drops them to the ground in disgust.

The ruins rumble, and he hears a vengeful cry from not far off. Ultima comes seeking him, and she bears Fran's face. She is angry, and she is merciless. He licks his dry, cracked lips and tastes blood. The sword is half-buried in the mortar between two stones, so close that he could reach out and grasp the handle while still braced against the Waystone.

It is no gigas blade, no Treaty-Blade or Sword of Kings, something too mighty for mortal man. What he finds instead is something more closely resembling a short sword--no, a dagger, with a jagged, irregular grip like the teeth of a key. When he closes his hand around the hilt, a spark travels up his arm and cracks in his face like black powder, leaving him stunned and deaf. The Glyphs on his back and ankle ignite, and there is a burn and a babble in his head. For one small, mad moment he is certain he's gone his father's way at last.

Then the words resolve themselves.

 _I sense an old, familiar fear here._ The voice shivers and tumbles like water down stone steps.

 _What fear have those who serve already?_ This one creaks like scales beneath a heavy burden.

Balthier wrenches the dagger free. The hilt has left deep grooves imprinted on the inside of his palm. The ceiling shivers, and a high, howling shriek echoes through the shattered corridors. "How do I use it?" he rasps.

 _The Glyph_ , the raincloud hums. _The bond is from blood crafted._

Balthier closes his eyes. From very close comes the sound of burst stone, masonry raining down like hail. A plan blooms in his mind with broad brushstrokes, and he allows himself one small, brief smile before struggling to his knees. His body is heavy on his bones.

Ultima arrives with a bang like the making of the world, and Balthier keeps his back against the wall, the dagger blade-forward; it is the only thing Ultima might fear.

But she does not. She laughs instead, her head thrown back in the manner of a villain in a classical play, as if you might later find it immortalized on a vase. But her face is Fran's face, her frame is Fran's frame, and to Balthier it seems like the world inverted, facing a laughing Fran in battle. Her wings are spread in righteousness--save for the one that droops, riddled with shot. Balthier is not so desperate that he must suppress his smirk. She sees it, and her face darkens.

"Think you that tiny toy to hurt me?" she sneers. She gestures to the dagger, which indeed seems like a toothpick compared to the brilliance of her shadow.

"Not at all," Balthier says cheerfully, and summons Exodus into being.

"You trait'rous dog!" Ultima bellows even as she and Exodus lock swords, her holy face twisted with rage. "What do you here? Rise up! They are not gods; nor have they e'er been!"

"And yet it took you long to free yourself," Exodus observes in a deep, sonorous grind, "and only thanks to mortal god-stone." He twists his blade, looking to unbalance her, but she recovers and deals him a blow of light to his shoulder. He rocks, but does not fall. "You led us once, angelic one, and brought us down. And now, you fall alone." He slams her against the wall, then, causing more rubble to shower down around them. They will bring all Gudgodah down on their heads, at this rate. Exodus summons a meteor to one hand.

"Hold!" Balthier calls. "Do not harm her!"

The meteor halts midway to the seraph's face. "Master?" He sounds uncertain.

"Hold her," Balthier repeats, picking his way through the detritus. He is very small between them. Ultima rolls her eyes at him, hissing like a teakettle, as Balthier lays the blade against her belly, where the Glyph would glow. Ultima screams, then, a wail that would shame the banshee, and with desperate fury flings both Balthier and Exodus away. The dagger slips from Balthier's fingers, flung away to parts unknown, but it matters not; there was no Glyph, and Ultima does not bleed. Those are only Fran's eyes, Fran's voice, Fran's hair that feathers into wings of russet and gold; Fran is not there.

Exodus is up, acting as a shield. "Your partner is no longer with us," he intones.

"Thank you ever so much for stating the obvious," Balthier mutters, neither acknowledging nor denying the truth of the espers' words. A wet, scarlet stain blooms across his sleeve, like a butterfly unfurling its wings. He cannot quite get his breath; his chest is wrong. "What was it you said earlier, about her body being weakened by, by the mortals' god-stone? We destroyed the nethicite ages ago."

"He speaks of that which runs your precious ship." Ultima's words drip with sweet mushroom poison. "Her kind have always faltered 'gainst the power of the stone. Thought you the stones of man's creating would be different?"

Bile rises in Balthier's throat, but there is no time for weakness now. Ultima has torn a piece of Exodus' armor from him. The Judge-Sal sags, but holds steady. "Master," he says, and his voice does not tremble, "please take yourself from here."

And because there is nothing else to be done, Balthier runs. His legs tremble beneath him; his head feels as though he is still infected with the nightmare's poison. Not until he is well into the corridors and the sounds of battle are only tremors in the walls does he summon Famfrit. When the esper appears, he scoops Balthier up in one arm, counter to his waterjug, and stomps through the halls in search of daylight. Balthier leans against the meaty forearm and thinks of his father, and the Pharos, and not at all of Fran. Perhaps he falls asleep. An enormous clap reverberates throughout the ruins and straightens his spine, but Gudgodah does not collapse upon them. When his vision clears, he sees the gates.

They are large enough that Famfrit passes through them with no trouble. Perhaps the road was constructed for giants, then, that they might humble themselves at these gates where their ancestors first fell to earth. It is gray dawn out here in the world; it might be Mist, or it might be early-morning fog that veils the trees. Balthier does not know, and he little cares. He feels as heavy and brittle as glass. Famfrit carries him past the wasted walls with their impotent guardians, all the way to the airship, and sets him in the grass. Balthier crawls into the airship nearly on his hands and knees.

His hands tremble as he disconnects the fuel lines and reconnects them, but he spills not a drop, pinching them off so that they do not trickle. He reconnects them counter to their original locations, hearing his master's voice in his ear all the while: _This is how you milk the last few miles from a dying skystone_. She is long dead now, he thinks. His knuckles are stiff and painful.

He pauses to retch out the hatch.

Afterward, he wipes his mouth and staggers into the cargo hold, seeking the spare batteries. One by one, he thumbs them into the casings: _This is how you overpower a weak engine. Careful, it doesn't last for long, and it will cause the ship to overheat. I've told you what happens, when it overheats_. And, at last, he rotates the skystone so that it is at an angle.

He returns to the hatch. Famfrit stands at the nose of the ship, pointed to Gudgodah, like a sentinel hound. He is not so monstrous, Balthier thinks. "I don't suppose there's any way I can free you," he says.

"No, master," the esper says.

"The dagger," he says, belatedly. It is buried in the ruins now, where it is like that no mortal eye will ever spy it again. Good; he hates the thing. "It would only seal you back inside the stone, wouldn't it?"

"Aye, master."

"A pity," Balthier murmurs. It is what Fran needed after all, he thinks, and leans against the ship. His chest still aches. He thinks he broke a rib. "Is there some way, you think, that you shall ever be free?"

"I do not know, master," the esper replies.

"Well," Balthier says. "I believe it is beyond my ken now." He smiles at his private little joke and retreats back within the airship. From his vantage point in the cockpit, he spies a cloud of dust or smoke or magick or Mist, and then a blaze of crimson. The ground rumbles beneath the ship, so that even Balthier can feel it, and a rush of wind batters against the windshield. Famfrit does not move.

UItima comes rushing toward them. Balthier can see her even from a distance, wings radiating from her like the legs of some great immortal spider. Balthier flicks the switches one by one, with lazy, exaggerated movements. The gauges rise and rise, the needles pointing to red; the ship whines in warning. Balthier lets his head fall back. His clothes have left dark streaks against the seat. He does not rise to greet his guest, though he can see her face--Fran's face--grinning.

The Strahl explodes.

\---

The Holy City saw the light, and they felt the blast of wind after, but the explosion made no sound. Afterward, the place was Jagd; ships listed, foundered, and fell. It became a cursed place, a haunted place, and none who valued life would venture there by foot or by air.

Save one: Ajora. In what was once a holy ground she found four stones, and they whispered to her of gods and power.


End file.
